Month: December 2019

Categories
News News Blog

Ceremony Planned to Honor Those Affected by HIV/AIDS

A lantern lighting ceremony is planned here for Monday, December 2nd, (today) to honor those who are living with or have lost their lives to HIV/AIDS.

The annual ceremony is hosted by the Shelby County Health Department’s (SCHD) Ryan White Program, a federal program that establishes a comprehensive system of HIV/AIDS support services around the country. It begins at 5:30 p.m. at Beale Street Landing.

The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 38,832 people were diagnosed with HIV in the United States during 2018. The CDC also reported that as many as one in seven people in the country unknowingly have the virus.

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CDC data showed that in 2018, more than half of all the HIV diagnoses in the country occurred in the South, 47 percent of HIV-related deaths were in the South, and 46 percent of all people in the country living with HIV were Southerners.

In a report earlier this year, the CDC said the South experiences “the greatest burden of HIV and deaths of any U.S. region.” The CDC also said the South “lags behind in providing quality HIV prevention services and care. Closing these gaps is essential to the health of people in the region and to our nation’s long-term success in ending the HIV epidemic.”

CDC

The CDC attributes the high number of HIV diagnoses in the South to socioeconomic factors like poverty and unemployment, as well as barriers such as a lack of health insurance.

In Tennessee, the Tennessee Health Department reports that 713 people were diagnosed with HIV in 2017 and 17,522 Tennesseans were living with diagnosed HIV that year. The SCHD estimates that in 2018, 6,600 residents of Shelby County were living with HIV.

TDH

The SCHD advises that members of the public get tested and know their HIV status. Free testing will be offered at Monday’s ceremony.

Here are a few places around town that provide HIV testing, counseling, case management, or other support services:

• Parker Clinic, 814 Jefferson

• Cawthon Public Health, 1000 Haynes

• Memphis Health Center, 260 E. E.H. Crump

• Choices, 1726 Poplar

• Friends for Life, 43 N. Cleveland

• Planned Parenthood, 2430 Poplar

• LeBonheur Community HIV Network, 848 Adams

• OUTMemphis, 892 Cooper

• Christ Community Health Services, multiple locations

Categories
Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Music Video Monday: Al Kapone

Music Video Monday gonna stomp your ass.

Yeah, it’s the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, and it’s coming on like Godzilla— or like a hundred-foot Al Kapone. Director Sean Winfrey got the idea to blow up Kapeezy to match his giant-sized influence on Memphis hip hop after working with him on Graham Brewer’s YouTube show.

“One night at Railgarten, I told him about this idea for a music video I had, in which he walked around the city as large as Godzilla. He loved the idea and let me run with it,” says Winfrey. “I first shot video of him in front of an enclosed green screen. For the next couple of weeks, I went around Memphis and shot video of environments so that I could make compositions with Al superimposed as large as Godzilla. I went through a lot of trial and error at first, but after consuming many old Godzilla films, I decided to mirror the look and feel of older films. The focus wasn’t on the best quality of special effects, which was slowing me down, but the aesthetic of older cinema techniques.”

Here’s Kapone breathing fire on “Al Kapeezy Oh Boy”:

Music Video Monday: Al Kapone

If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Sports Tiger Blue

Three Thoughts on the AAC Championship

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

• For the third straight season, the Memphis Tigers will play on college football’s biggest, most exclusive weekend. Seventy-eight teams will play in bowl games over the next five weeks. But only 20 get to play for a conference championship on the first Saturday in December. Aside from the New Year’s Six, you can have “bowl season.” I’ll take the weekend all 10 FBS leagues decide a champion on the field. And for the first time, one of these games will be played here in Memphis, at the Liberty Bowl.
Larry Kuzniewski

Bryce Huff

The Tigers celebrated their division title last Friday, clinched with the victory over Cincinnati. But it’s the American Athletic Conference championship — to be decided on the field, against those same Bearcats — that would take the Memphis program a place it’s never been before. Coach Mike Norvell made that clear in describing the minimalist approach to last week’s celebration. “There have not been a ton of trophies lifted around here,” said Norvell after his team’s 11th win of the season (a program first). “Winning the West Division is pretty special. To represent where this program has grown, the foundation former players built . . . we want to celebrate it. But we’re not done. We did what we’re supposed to do. I want us to continue to grow. I want to see that hunger. We can talk about the ‘three-peat’ of winning the division, but we want to finish the journey.”

• Championships are won, yes, with line play. When the Tigers score their first touchdown (or field goal) Saturday, they’ll surpass 500 points for the fifth straight season. It’s a scoring total the program never reached before the 2015 campaign. You could say Memphis has established not so much an offensive scheme, but an offensive system, the kind that rolls over, one generation of players to the next. But when I consider the strength of this year’s Tiger offense, the record-breaking numbers of Brady White, Kenneth Gainwell, Antonio Gibson, and Damonte Coxie are merely the dressing. The meat of this juggernaut has been an offensive line as strong and stable as any the U of M has ever suited up. From left to right, they are Obinna Eze, Dylan Parham, Dustin Woodard (the senior center made his 50th start last Friday), Manuel Orona-Lopez, and Scottie Dill. Remarkably, this group has started all 12 games for Memphis, well-nigh impossible for a position tasked with creating collisions on every snap of every game. The unit will lose only Woodard at season’s end, meaning the Tiger offense — the Tiger offensive system — is in a good place for 2020 and beyond.

• Back-to-back Bearcats . . . big deal. In each of the Tigers’ previous two appearances in the AAC championship, they faced a team they’d played in the regular season (UCF). I don’t see the proximity between the Tigers’ regular-season game against Cincinnati with Saturday’s championship to be all that significant. Sure, familiarity breeds contempt and all that, but this is football. One play from scrimmage is usually enough to breed contempt. After Friday’s win, Coxie talked about talking, and the blocking he and his fellow Tiger receivers enjoy, and how much defenders don’t enjoy it. “I like to get in [defensive backs’] heads,” said Coxie, on the verge of his second-straight 1,000-yard season. “They don’t like to be touched.” He didn’t sound like someone concerned about what this week’s opponent heard — or felt — in last week’s game.

The Tigers beat Cincinnati without playing their best football. They failed to capitalize (and score) on a pair of Bearcat turnovers. The Memphis defense allowed the Cincinnati offense to stay on the field too much (eight third-down conversions and one on fourth-down). Saturday’s game will likely come down to which team plays better in the second half. And the cliche holds: Mistakes lose games (and championships). A team celebrated all season for its ability to execute a game plan — and minimize mistakes — will need to hold form in one more home game, with the prize likely a berth in the Cotton Bowl. Memphis football going places it’s never been before. Again.

Categories
Beyond the Arc Sports

‘Funky Lineups’ Help Grizzlies End 6-Game Losing Streak

CREDIT: Larry Kuzniewski

The Grizzlies ended their six-game losing streak against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Sunday afternoon, 115–107. Unlikely heroes emerged for the team, which played without Ja Morant (back soreness), Kyle Anderson (heel soreness) and big man Jonas Valanciunas (illness). To make matters worse, Brandon Clarke also left the game with an aggravated hip injury. 

Larry Kuzniewski

Dillon Brooks

Taylor Jenkins had clear instructions for his short-handed team on the road: “I hit the guys with a simple message that we were going to have some funky lineups up there and I just need guys going up there and competing,” he said. “That’s what we’re all about and that’s what we need to get back to and I’m super proud of them. To come out here against a playoff team, with a high level back-and-forth for our guys to dig down for 48 minutes it created energy for us and that’s the positive spirit we need to have, win or lose and to come out on top of that, cements the recipe we’re talking about.”

Larry Kuzniewski

Dillon Brooks, Taylor Jenkins

Jenkins continued, “Our bench was huge for us today and we got that production from our starters and our bench not just on the offensive side but our defense was amazing and it was a great team effort and these guys deserved it.”

Dillon Brooks led the Grizzlies with 26 points, going 4-of-5 from the three-point line.
When Brooks scores 20 or more points, this team usually wins. “We just found a way and figured it out, said Brooks of winning on the road. “It started with our defense and then we translated into our offense.”

‘Funky Lineups’ Help Grizzlies End 6-Game Losing Streak

Bruno Caboclo and De’Anthony Melton played significant minutes to help their team secure the victory. Caboclo added 12 points and 13 rebounds in 29 minutes for his first double-double of the season. With 12 pts and 10 rebounds in the 2nd half, Caboclo became the first reserve to post a double-double in a single half since Zach Randolph in 2016. Melton ended the game with nine points, a team-high eight assists, seven rebounds, and two steals in 23 minutes.

‘Funky Lineups’ Help Grizzlies End 6-Game Losing Streak (4)

‘Funky Lineups’ Help Grizzlies End 6-Game Losing Streak (3)

Notes

‘Funky Lineups’ Help Grizzlies End 6-Game Losing Streak (2)

In his first game back in Minnesota, Tyus Jones ended with 12 points on 5-of-9 shooting, four rebounds, and seven assists.

“We did whatever we had to get a win at this point — and stop the losing streak we had been on, said Jones.” We corrected what needed to be corrected and it says a lot about this team and how we are able to stick with it. We came on the road here and beat a good team.”

Grayson Allen had a good game off the bench with 13 points on 4-of-9 from the field and 3-of-6 from beyond the arc. Allen also grabbed five rebounds.

For just the third time this season the Grizzlies outscored an opponent in the third period, 38-32. Jones said it was their focus to have a big third quarter. He said, “We talked about it at half-time and we wanted to come out and not let them go on a run and not let the third quarter be the difference in a negative way and let it be a positive for us.”

Solomon Hill tallied 11 points and five rebounds. Hill finished with a game high +22.

Karl-Anthony Towns was held to 7-of-21 from the field. He ended the game with 21 points and 12 rebounds. It was his 15th double-double of the season.

Quotables
Taylor Jenkins, Grizzlies head coach

On what it was that resulted in a strong second half…

“I think we let it slip away in the second quarter. We didn’t get a bucket, they would score, we turned it over and our guys were pissed off. They realized we had this lead on the road and we needed to go win a ball game and they kept their spirits up. They recognized that wasn’t good enough to finish, let’s come out the second half with our foot on the gas pedal and they started it with defense. It was a back and forth game but our guys had that mentality and broke through with the right stops, execution, and effort.”

Dillon Brooks, Grizzlies guard
On using unfamiliar lineups, but having success…

“We practice and we practice hard. Everyone’s focused, everyone knows the plays. Everyone is professional and is ready to contribute when their time comes. With Ja [Morant] out, Brandon [Clarke] out, Kyle [Anderson] out, and JV [Jonas Valanciunas], guys stepped up.”

On how the team defended Karl-Anthony Towns…

“We pressured the heck out of him, we didn’t want him getting to his spots. We just contested every single three he had. You know, he shot 1-for-10, that was great. A tribute to Jaren [Jackson]’s contests, Bruno [Caboclo]’s contests and just playing physical with him.”

Up Next
The Grizzlies return home to host the Indiana Pacers at FedExForum on Monday. Tip-off at 7 p.m. CST.